This will let you activate an application called “Random Words Notify” from the GNOME launcher.

Last step, binding it to a key.

First, you need to have /usr/bin/exo-open available on your system (for some context, see GNOME bug 343896). On Debian and Ubuntu, you’ll need to install exo-utils and on Fedora exo.

You will also need to make the desktop file itself executable: chmod 700 ~/.local/share/applications/rw-notify.desktop

Now, finally open the keyboard shortcuts editor (open the Activities view and start typing “Keyboard”). Scroll to the bottom and press the + to add a new custom shortcut:

Then press “Set shortcut” followed by the keys you want (in my case, Ctrl+Alt+R), and fill in a name and, as the command, the full path of the rw-notify.desktop file, eg /home/mary/.local/share/applications/rw-notify.desktop:

Press “Add” and now Ctrl+Alt+R will bring up 5 random words in a notification for you:

All shell scripts and commands in this post (enclosed in the <code> HTML tags) are in the public domain.